BRASILIA: A committee of Brazil's lower house of Congress voted 38-27 on Monday to recommend the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, who faces charges of breaking budget laws to support her re-election in 2014.

A vote in the full lower house is expected to take place on Sunday. If two-thirds vote in favor, the impeachment will be sent to the Senate.

If the upper house decides by a simple majority to put Rousseff on trial, she will immediately be suspended for up to six months while the Senate decides her fate, and Vice President Michel Temer will take office as acting president.

It would be the first impeachment of a Brazilian president since 1992 when Fernando Collor de Mello faced massive protests for his ouster on corruption charges and resigned moments before his conviction by the Senate.

Rousseff's chief of staff Jaques Wagner said the president was "perplexed and saddened" by the committee vote. A former leftist guerrilla, she has denied any wrongdoing and rallied the rank and file of her Workers' Party to oppose what she has called a coup against a democratically elected president.

Rousseff, caught in a political storm fueled by Brazil's worst recession in decades and the country's biggest corruption scandal, has lost key coalition allies in Congress, including her main partner, vice president Temer's PMDB party.

The rift between Rousseff and her vice president reached breaking point on Monday after an audio message of Temer calling for a government of national unity was released apparently by mistake, further muddying Brazil's political water.

Temer's 14-minute audio message sent to members of his own PMDB party via the WhatsApp messaging app showed he was preparing to take over if Rousseff is forced from office.

The audio was posted on the website of the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper and confirmed to Reuters by Temer's aides as authentic. Aides said it was accidentally released and they quickly sent another message asking legislators to disregard it.

In his message, Temer said he did not want to get ahead of events, but he had to show the country he was ready to lead it if needed.

"We need a government of national salvation and national unity," Temer said in the audio. "We need to unite all the political parties, and all the parties should be ready to collaborate to drag Brazil out of this crisis."

Dilma Rousseff's chief of staff called the vice president a "conspirator" and said he should resign if Rousseff survives impeachment.

"Having joined the conspiracy, he should resign when it is defeated, because the climate will become unbearable," Wagner told reporters.

Wagner said the government will continue working to muster enough votes to block impeachment in the lower house, encouraged by the fact that in committee the opposition had not won the two thirds it will need in the plenary.

The committee vote, however, is expected to sway undecided lawmakers to vote for Rousseff's removal, said Claudio Couto, a politics professor at the Fundacao Getulio Vargas think tank.

"It has a snowball effect. With each approval, the chances of impeachment clearing the next chamber increases," Couto said. "The wider the margin, the more momentum impeachment will gather."